AA gave me my systemwide upgrade back, and 20,000 miles!

In mid-February, I was fortunate enough to be able to take long weekend to travel to Milan, Italy. Routing from DCA to JFK and then on the non-stop JFK-MXP flight, I used 2 of my Executive Platinum systemwide upgrades to sit in Business Class on both the outbound and return journey.

To make a long story short, there was an equipment swap on the JFK-MXP leg and instead of being on the refurbished 767 with lay-flat seats, I was on an older 767 with the angled-flat seats. About 20 minutes into the flight, the seat started to become inoperable, and wouldn’t recline, or move into any position that matter. The purser was kind enough to manually adjust the seat with some pullies and levers, however the seat was never really in a usable position for the flight, not to mention it was a disturbance for my seat-mate, who I’m sure paid good money to sit in peace and quiet, and not have flight attendants disturb every few minutes to figure out the mechanical problem. Because the flight was full, I was forced to stay where I was, though the purser made sure to file a maintenance report of the problem, that way when I were to call customer service upon landing, it would back up my story.

After landing, and several days later, I called AAdvantage customer service to request my systemwide upgrade back. It was filed into a report, and after several communications, I received positive word back from AA: I’d receive my systemwide upgrade back and 20,000 AAdvantage miles for the delay and trouble.

This is more than generous, in my opinion, especially seeing that the systemwide upgrade was free, and a perk of being an elite. While I did get shuffled around on the phone between several agents, and it took over a month to resolve, I’m very happy at the resolution, and is one of the reasons why I still call AA home.